Beth, an aspiring singer, rises to stardom with the help of her manager Stênio, who is also a bootlegger. Stênio's illegal activities are being monitored by a police detective. Beth is in love with Gui, a composer, but Stênio also develops feelings towards her.
Boring Svengali-type drama with lots of song numbers. The only minimally interesting part of the movie is a car chase through the streets of the Brazilian city of Salvador.
Rating: 22
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Thursday, July 16, 2020
O Meu Pé de Laranja Lima (1970)
In the 1920s, a five-year-old boy from a poor family suffers domestic violence from his father and his sister. He befriends a middle aged man from his neighborhood.
Poorly made literary adaptation. The source novel suffers from suffocating sentimentality, which is a bit attenuated on the screen. While that is not exactly unfortunate, it also makes more evident the banality of much of the narrative. For justice's sake, the film has some virtues: the main actors don't do a bad job, and as a portrait of a specific era in Brazil it is not completely worthless.
Rating: 31
Poorly made literary adaptation. The source novel suffers from suffocating sentimentality, which is a bit attenuated on the screen. While that is not exactly unfortunate, it also makes more evident the banality of much of the narrative. For justice's sake, the film has some virtues: the main actors don't do a bad job, and as a portrait of a specific era in Brazil it is not completely worthless.
Rating: 31
Saturday, July 11, 2020
Fome de Amor (1968)
English title: Hunger for Love
Felipe, a frustrated painter, takes his wife Mariana to live in a deserted island. Mariana comes from a bourgeois family and Felipe is penniless. After a few days, they notice that another house has dwellers, Alfredo and Ulla, with whom Felipe was already acquainted. While Felipe begins to spend his days with Ulla, Mariana feels attracted towards Alfredo, a former revolutionary who became blind, deaf and dumb after an explosion. Mariana feels more and more ill at ease with the situation she is living in, and is increasingly suspicious of Felipe and Ulla.
Mostly mediocre drama with a few interesting moments. The last section is probably the best part, with its nightmarish atmosphere and crescendo of paranoia which explodes into ideological delirium. Much of the film, on the other hand, has its characters simply wandering about and conveying information to the viewer through dialogue. Anyway, it is a valuable document about youth in the late 1960s and the madness it was subjected to by Mao and his writings. In that, it makes a curious third-world companion to La chinoise.
Rating: 45
Felipe, a frustrated painter, takes his wife Mariana to live in a deserted island. Mariana comes from a bourgeois family and Felipe is penniless. After a few days, they notice that another house has dwellers, Alfredo and Ulla, with whom Felipe was already acquainted. While Felipe begins to spend his days with Ulla, Mariana feels attracted towards Alfredo, a former revolutionary who became blind, deaf and dumb after an explosion. Mariana feels more and more ill at ease with the situation she is living in, and is increasingly suspicious of Felipe and Ulla.
Mostly mediocre drama with a few interesting moments. The last section is probably the best part, with its nightmarish atmosphere and crescendo of paranoia which explodes into ideological delirium. Much of the film, on the other hand, has its characters simply wandering about and conveying information to the viewer through dialogue. Anyway, it is a valuable document about youth in the late 1960s and the madness it was subjected to by Mao and his writings. In that, it makes a curious third-world companion to La chinoise.
Rating: 45
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